it’s me you can do without but you choose to stick it out

June 26, 2009

4 minute read

it’s 3:20 in the morning and i’m still working so i thought i would write something on here since it’s been a while. camp is going awesome (except for the whole still working at 3:20 in the morning part). there have been some great things that have happened here over the past two weeks.

i know that life is not about me.

i know that camp is not about me.

i’m still human, and i’m still selfish at times, so i can’t help but sit back sometimes and just be in the awe of the impact i’ve had on people at times over the past two weeks. i wrote back on january 12th that “i wanna change the world. i don’t know how. i have absolutely no clue what it’s going to take. i just know that there will come a day in the future when i can sit back and know that i’m doing something important that is impacting everyone around me in a positive way.” what i didn’t know when i wrote that was the the process of doing that would start a lot sooner than i expected.

being the video guy at camp, i knew that i wouldn’t be able to invest in students the same way that the counselors would. there just isn’t as much interaction in that way. however, i prayed before camp started that when given the chance, i would be able to take it.

last week that chance was in small groups. i helped out a couple counselors in their group for about 20 minutes or so. that led to other opportunities throughout the week. i was able to talk to kids about everything from sexual struggles to girl problems to putting god first in their life and it was a rush.

on tuesday night of this week, i got really frustrated. i knew i could be doing more and wanted to be doing more, but there was simply nothing to do. i went back to lynchburg for the night to clear my head and asked god to just give me the opportunity to impact just one life this week. what happened next even i didn’t expect.

i got back to camp on wednesday morning and asked our director if i could share my story that night before service (we have people give their testimony before service to go with the topic of that day). after giving him a brief run through of it, he said i could do it. that night, when my time came, i knew exactly what i was going to talk about. i was following a skit about getting rid of the baggage in your life and i was going to talk about all of the baggage i had to get rid of from ashley and school and living in god’s will and all of that crap.

before i started though, i prayed.

i prayed for the entire camp. i prayed that god would speak through me. i prayed that he would open the hearts of the campers to hear what he wanted them to hear. i also prayed that all of the distractions would be taken away and that the kids could focus on the entire service. little did i know that a simple prayer could impact so many people.

i told my story and went back to my seat. our speaker for the night got up to speak and said he was feeling led to change what he was speaking on and ended up preaching out of my favorite book of the bible (james 1). at the end of the night, he invited the students to come up to the alter and basically just give their crap to jesus. this group of kids who hadn’t really responded much during service the three previous nights responded in a way i didn’t expect. we had probably 100 kids go up there and kneel down and pray and spend some time talking to god.

i was on a huge jesus high.

then it got even better.

our counselors went to the front of the building in case any students wanted to talk one-on-one about something. i stayed in the back simply because that’s what i felt i should do. i had a student come to the back and ask me personally if he could talk to me. we went outside and talked for a few minutes. he told me what was going on and i really had no clue what to say. i knew i needed to open my bible though and had no idea where to go, but it just so happened that i ended up in matthew right on a passage that dealt exactly with his situation. after reading that and some other verses, we prayed together. today i talked to him and he said he prayed about things last night before bed and was feeling a lot better about things.

there is the one kid i asked god to give me the ability to connect with.

five months ago i knew i was on the verge of something. i didn’t know what but i could feel it inside me. that something is starting to come out little by little and i have never been more excited for anything. i called my grandpa after the service and told him i felt like i could do a backflip or something.